Diablo 3 is a dichotomy. It’s a game made by a company that states “It’s ready when it’s ready” yet it’s also a game grounded in the modern age of game development – an age where ongoing tweaks and hotfixes are the norm. In one respect, it’s reassuring. I remember when I was younger, you bought a game – a physical, offline game – and if there were bugs, tough. That game shipped with them and there were no updates. This applied even to PC games. On the other hand it’s a concern. Diablo 3, clearly, didn’t ship ready.
Yeah, I know it's not finished but... it's awesome right!?
Don’t get me wrong, I love Diablo 3 (and with the amount of time I spend playing it, talking about it, writing about it in the guild and here I’m glad I do!) but with the looming launch of the much anticipated RMAH, the current gold farming/bot issues, the bug giving you the ability to cancel your auctions at any time (which I discuss in the guild) and the amount of hotfixes going into a game with a very long beta test, I must say I’m a touch concerned.
Here’s the latest hotfixes:
Below you’ll find a list of hotfixes which address various gameplay and service issues affecting Diablo III. Hotfixes are updates we make on our end without requiring you to download a new patch. Some of the hotfixes below will go live the moment they are implemented, while others may require your realm to be restarted to go into effect. Please keep in mind that some issues cannot be addressed without a client-side patch update. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied.
Spoiler Warning: If you have not yet completed Diablo III on Normal, some hotfixes described in this list may include spoilers.
June 8
General
- In cooperative games, monster damage will no longer increase when additional players join the game. Please note that monster health will still scale based on the number of players in a party
Bug Fixes
- Tyrael no longer has collision when he is your active follower
- Pots of ashes in Act I and vases in Act IV will now drop less gold when destroyed
- Fixed a bug where players could turn in the same quest repeatedly and always receive rewards as though they were completing the quest for the first time
I know a lot of diehard Blizzard fans get very defensive about this tack – that the company slipped up with a long anticipated and long in development project, and I understand. I would hate for any problems to get worse and manifest as a drop in active players or a lack of further development for what is an awesome game. The fact remains that the amount of silly things being fixed (I mean, the Royal Crypts were a farm spot known about since beta 2011) that have been overlooked mean that a stern talk needs to be carried out at Blizz HQ.
We don’t need to be informed about it necessarily – I don’t even believe that the common call for ‘heads to roll’, from the most irate ex-fans, is something that needs to happen – but it needs to take place. Someone needs to sit the D3 team down and tell them they dropped the ball in a few places and it would be nice if that didn’t happen again.
I want to be clear that I’m still a huge fan and I’ve played hundreds of hours already and envision playing so many more. I want to be clear that I don’t feel ‘angry’ at the makers of Diablo 3. I want to be clear that I don’t think any company with Blizzard’s history can be foolish enough to believe they can do a ‘half assed job and still make bank’ (a belief held by the Actiblizzion conspiracy theorists).
I have one concern: I want to be playing Diablo 3, up to date, supported and as bug free as possible, for years to come. From this point on I’d like Blizzard to really stick to the policy “It’s ready when it’s ready”. What are your thoughts?
Ray